Geocaching in Shropshire and beyond…

Posts Tagged ‘Cheshire’

We’ve been umm’ing and ahh’ing about the Skeg To Ness series ever since it came out. It’s advertised as “193 miles and 207 drive by caches” and is basically a route from one side of the UK to the other, via quieter roads, with lots of caches along the way.

Initial reports of the series did not look too promising but better reports followed and in the end we could not resist. We’d done a day walking last week so decided to do the opposite this week: an intense day with lots of quick and easy caches. We decided we’d see if we could get 100 finds for the day, without going too far east as that would make the journey home at the end of the day longer.

The first cache of the day was just by the M53 at Cheshire Oaks Outlet Mall. There are 6 more caches to the west of here, but we’d have to double back on ourselves to find them so opted to leave them for another trip.

The first part of our route snaked through mid Cheshire along lots of very familiar lanes. Pretty much all the caches were 35mm containers and most were hidden in the same style – the base of a post. All nice and easy and we were soon racking up the finds quickly. We had a plan for 10 caches an hour and soon realised this was easily achievable.

At the far side of Cheshire the route started to climb up into the very beautiful Peak District. We’d been looking forward to this section of the route as it’s a fab place for caching and the scenery is stunning. We were not disappointed!

The series is split into sections with different local cachers being responsible for different sections of the series. It soon became clear we’d started on another cacher’s section as the containers changed to Small’s and some were hidden a short walk from the parking spot (they had all been drive-by’s so far).

We particularly liked the section through the Macclesfield Forest but the rest of the Peak District caches were also a pleasure to do. Along the way we spotted Tizzie just as we were pulling up to a cache near to the A52 between Leek and Buxton. We stopped for a quick chat before going on our ways (she was doing the caches in the other direction to us).

After the scenery and inventive hides of the Peak District we dropped down into the more built up areas of Chesterfield and north Nottinghamshire. The cache owner changed again and 35mm containers and even a few magnetic nano’s started to appear. Nothing too tricky but they were harder finds than the similar hides on the Cheshire section of the series.

We were approaching our 100th find of the day by now and spotted a nice looking cache in a nearby park with a 0.25 mile walk and a Regular sized container, so decided to head there and make that our milestone cache for the day. On the way back to the Jeep we stood and watched this guy flying his kite.

We decided to start thinking about heading for some tea but could not resist two more of the series on the way, plus an unrelated cache we spotted on TomTom as we went past.

103 finds for the day which whilst it’s not the most we’ve ever found in a day, it certainly blows our previous personal best in the UK of 72 finds out of the water.

A really good day caching too – we love the intensity of a cache run like this every so often as it’s the total opposite of the lovely long walk we did last weekend.

After the last few days festivities, we fancied some longer walks and nice scenery. Lots of new caches to find in Mid-Cheshire, many of which we’d been past numerous times when visiting friends and family in Warrington.

On the way, we stopped for a quick drive-by near the old Calverley WW2 disused airfield. Nice and easy as it’s a lot more exposed in Winter.

Next stop was the Cuddington area, where there were quite a few new caches to find.

As we were approaching the first one, we got stuck in a line of vintage tractors going very slowly up the A49. We thought we’d be ok as we were about to turn off, but as luck would have it (or not as the case may be), they all turned down the same lane as us! Finding the cache was tricky as we had to time it in between passing tractors on the track – apparently there were 130 of them in total!

The next cache was a HUGE ammo box that was very well hidden considering it’s size. We then set off for a nice multi with a very original way of hiding the final co-ords at the first stage. I won’t say any more here as I don’t want to ruin it for future finders, but rest assured it’s a good one.

A few caches later and we were parking up at the Vale Royal Golf Club, for a very nice walk in the woods alongside the River Weaver. An absolutely fabulous place for caches.

We then got to find Caravan Of Love near Bartington. This one has been bugging us as it beeps at us on TomTom every time we go past on the A49 but it would take too long to do if Mrs Bolas Heathens is waiting in the car for us. Today it was just Isaac and myself so no problems with a longer walk.

We were intending to head over to Chester but the lure of three new Pieman caches at Tabley Mere near Knutsford proved too much to resist. We’d missed the deadline for the prizes in the cache but that’s ok as I always feel awkward about accepting FTF presents, let alone one worth potentially quite a bit.

The first of the three was a nice easy Traditional over the other side of the field from where we parked. When we opened this one up and saw the instructions for the start of the second cache we realised we’d be in for some fun on this one. What a great idea – wish we’d have thought of it.

After a bit of trickery and a stage or two later, we had the details we needed to actually find the final cache (it was a two part multi). Not as simple as just going to some stated co-ords, but not too bad after a bit of lateral thinking. This was our favourite of the three caches here.

We then had the last cache to do and this was more straightforward, but still great fun. A nice quick find of a bigger ammo box at the end too.

It was starting to go dark by now, so we thought we’d head down to Crewe to pick off a lone cache we needed to find there, before heading over to Alsager to clear up the newer caches there.

The Crewe one was nice and easy but we had fun and games in Alsager. One of the caches was themed around a local cacher’s dog walk and we made a right mess of it as one of the clues was ambiguous and guess what, we took the wrong answer. After realising the cache could not be where we though it was, we had to PAF twice to pin down the area we needed to be in (it’s trickier to see in the dark, that’s our exucse). It was then an easy find.

On the way home from there, we stopped at one last cache which was on a bridge over the M6 and you had to take a photo of yourself in some dressing up gear that was in the cache. Luckily Isaac was keen so I did not need to make a fool of myself (although the passing motorists would not have seen us as it was dark).

19 finds in total, but lots of really good walking and some fab caches.